14 DAY TRIAL // The holiday season means quite a lot of things for the big companies in the gaming industry. Besides the big sales and large profits, generated by people who want to give away games or consoles to their loved ones, a major emphasis is laid on the online services provided by the companies. People will be staying in their homes, will want to unwind by playing a few games, and expect no problems from the consoles and games they have recently purchased.
Nevertheless, sadly as it may sound, that isn't the case sometimes, as last year Microsoft's very popular Xbox Live online system crashed and left millions of users with no opportunity of online play and no statistics tracking if they played offline. This problem made quite a lot of gamers angry, who inundated the official Xbox forum with messages that didn't quite contain the best holiday wishes.
Now, as the holidays are approaching, such a thing won't happen, at least according to Group Product Manager for the Xbox 360, Aaron Greenberg, who claims that, along with the New Xbox Experience, the whole infrastructure has been changed, and is now capable of withstanding the Christmas avalanche of gamers who log in to Xbox Live and use its services. However, if the number of users will be too big, the company will have people standing by in order to fix any possible occurring problems.
“We’ve built a lot of infrastructure, a lot of behind the curtain no one sees,” he says. “This is something that Microsoft is good at. We are well prepared for the type of growth we expect this holiday. We will have people standing by, more people on hand than we've ever had before. Knock on wood we will hopefully not have any issues.”
Well, those are some very optimistic statements made by Greenberg. Let's just hope that all of the online services, should it be the case of Xbox Live or of the PlayStation Network, will handle the holiday surge in users and everyone will have a pleasant gaming experience this season.